Items tagged with (NYSE:TWTR)
Twitter has announced the winners of its first algorithmic bias bounty challenge, with the top prize going to Bogdan Kulynych, a graduate student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne's Security and Privacy Engineering Lab. His submission showed how certain beauty filters could game the scoring system Twitter uses, highlighting a preference towards younger, lighter, and slimmer faces in photo previews. What is this all about, exactly? When posting photos to Twitter, the social networking site leans on machine learning to figure out what part of the image to crop. These cropped previews are what other Twitter users see, and if interested, they can click/tap on the photo to see...
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TikTok has been under fire by the United States government over fears that it might share the massive amounts of data it collects on Americans with the Chinese government. A new report claims that another significant player in the technology world is now eyeing the purchase of TikTok assets. Twitter is reportedly considering the purchase of TikTok's U.S. operations. Microsoft is the other major player in the technology world reportedly looking at purchasing TikTok. CEO Satya Nadella confirmed last week that Microsoft was in talks for a potential purchase of TikTok operations in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Twitter's participation in purchase talks hasn't been confirmed...
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The culprits of the high-profile Twitter hack that occurred just over two weeks ago have been apprehended, and the ringleader is actually 17-year-old Graham Clark from Tampa, Florida. The teenager also had two accomplices: 22-year-old Nima Fazeli from Orlando, Florida and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard from the United Kingdom. On July 15th, the Twitter accounts of some big-name celebrities and companies were hacked including Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Apple. It was later reported by Twitter that 130 total accounts were targeted, and tweets were sent out from 45 of those accounts in connection with a Bitcoin scam that garnered the culprits around $120,000....
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Following a massive data breach earlier this week, Twitter now finds itself in the precarious position of balancing transparency with security. That's to say, Twitter has divulged some additional details about what happened and what steps it is taking in the aftermath, but is also keeping certain information close to the vest. The incident took place last Wednesday, when several hacked, high profile accounts perpetuated a Bitcoin scam—tweets from accounts belonging to Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates, and other notable figures solicited Bitcoin with the promising of sending back double whatever amount they received. It was a nonsense promise, of course, but reports...
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A major Twitter hack was perpetrated yesterday that resulted in multiple high-profile Twitter accounts being compromised. Among the hacked accounts were those of Apple, Elon Musk, and U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden. All of the compromised accounts displayed similar messages that promised to double the amount of Bitcoin sent to a specific wallet address. The Bitcoin scam is a common one, but the fact that it was being broadcast from major verified Twitter accounts made it more likely that users would click on it. Also among the compromised accounts were those belonging to Kim Kardashian West, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Wiz Khalifa, Warren Buffett, and Michael Bloomberg. Multiple...
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Twitter has announced that it is blocking the APNG image format from its service. APNG is an animated PNG file, and Twitter is taking this step because it doesn't follow standard autoplay settings. The animated images can automatically play no matter what setting the user has enabled. Twitter said that it had found a bug that allowed users to add multiple APNGs to a tweet and that the file format ignored its safeguards against auto-playing images and could cause performance issues for the app and a user's device. We want everyone to have a safe experience on Twitter. APNGs were fun, but they don’t respect autoplay settings, so we're removing the ability to add them to Tweets. This is for...
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Twitter has warned users of the Android app to immediately update their app to the latest version. The reason Twitter is urging caution is due to a possible vulnerability that was discovered within the Twitter for Android application. The vulnerability could allow a bad actor to see non-public account information or to control the user's account. Control over an account would have allowed the bad actor to send tweets and DMs from the compromised user account. Twitter notes that the method used to exploit the vulnerability was complicated, and involved inserting malicious code into restricted storage areas of the Twitter app. It may have been possible for the bad actor to access information like...
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Are your tweets reaching your followers? Your influence on Twitter may be rather limited in the new year. Twitter recently released their new terms of service and will begin shadow banning users. The terms will be effective as of January 1, 2020 and apply to those who live outside the European Union or European Economic Area. The terms of service state, We may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services or any features within the Services to you or to users generally. We also retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time. We may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, limit distribution or visibility of any...
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In this day and age, online account security is constantly under attack by nefarious parties that are looking to settle scores, makes a few bucks, or simply trying to make a name for themselves. 2K Games found this out the hard way last night after a number of its social media accounts were hacked in a massive security breach for the game publisher. Not only was the company's Facebook account compromised, but its Twitter profile was also taken over by foul-mouthed pranksters. One social media account being compromised is bad enough, but this was a coordinated attack across multiple mediums, which is much more troubling security problem for 2K Games. Messages posted to Facebook and Twitter consisted...
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Last night, AMD officially launched its second-generation EPYC 7002 processors for the enterprise market (you can read our deep dive here). Based on the new Zen 2 architecture that underpins the newly released Ryzen 3000 desktop processor family, EPYC 7002 chips bring a significant performance and density improvements over their EPYC 7001 predecessors. Two companies that have been paying close attention to AMD’s strength in the data center market with the first-generation EPYC and early samples of the new Rome-based EPYC chips are Google and Twitter. Both companies have been impressed enough with what AMD brings to the table they have signed up to use the EPYC 7002 processors...
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Social media provides a lot of value to the world, but a new study suggests that we should start taking it in smaller doses - ideally no more than 30 minutes per day. The experimental study was conducted by Melissa G. Hunt and others at the University of Pennsylvania, and indications so far show that modest use of social media can directly improve our mental well-being. With the help of 143 participants, two groups were created. The first group was limited to 10 minutes of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat each day. The other group consisted of people who didn't have to change their habits at all. Before the study was kicked off, every participant filled out a "well-being survey" to gauge...
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We have been bookmarking websites with our internet browsers for almost as long as the public internet has been in existence. Twitter, on the other hand, hasn’t made it easy to save favorite tweets, images, and other content until now. Luckily, Twitter has officially rolled out Bookmarks. Bookmarks will allow users to quickly and easily save Tweets for fast access later. Saving stuff for you to peruse later isn’t all Twitter is doing, however, it is also making it easier to share content with a new "share" icon on every Tweet. Twitter wrote, "With our new 'share' icon on every Tweet, you’ll be able to bookmark a Tweet, share via Direct Message, or share off of Twitter any number...
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Much to the delight of some and dismay of others, US President Donald Trump maintains an active presence on Twitter—nary a days goes by that he does not post several tweets, which can range from praising his administration and policies, to blasting the media with accusations of fake news. But for a brief period yesterday evening, the President found himself without access to his favorite social media platform after his account had been deactivated by Twitter. His account vanished from the Twitterverse at around 6:45 PM Thursday. Visitors to his page saw a message stating, "Sorry, that pages doesn't exist!" It was back online before 7:00 PM the same night, and about an hour later Twitter posted...
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The challenge that everyone using Twitter has dealt with at some point is hitting that max character limit. The limit right now is 140 characters, and that can be easy to hit for those that aren't fond of brevity. This means that many end up shortening words to fit in what they need to say or using multiple tweets. That is about to change with Twitter announcing that it is increasing the character limit increase to 280.Twitter's Aliza Rosen says that in many languages like English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French it's very easy to hit the character limit when trying to express meanings and emotions. At the same time, in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, people rarely hit the character...
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LG has teased only a handful of details about its upcoming V30 handset after unveiling the flagship phone at IFA in Berlin earlier this week. One of the unknowns is the price, or so that was the case initially. According to the fine print of a Twitter contest that LG is promoting, the unlocked version of the V30 has an approximate retail value (AVR) of $749.99 in the United States. As part of the contest, LG is giving away three V30 phones for free. Those who are eligible need only retweet the following Twitter post to enter: We're giving away 3 LG V30s to celebrate the launch of the 3rd V series smartphone! RT for a chance to win. Terms: https://t.co/hmkBsMigrk pic.twitter.com/Mt7ewnAAlr— LG...
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Twitter users are debating whether or not a picture posted by Samsung's Exynos processor division depicts the South Korean electronics maker's forthcoming Galaxy Note 8 handset. If that is indeed the case, then pat Samsung on the back for a clever use of social media. And even if that is not the case, it is good publicity for Samsung and its unreleased phablet handset. The picture shows a Exynos 9 system-on-chip (SoC) sitting on top of an unmarked smartphone. It is intended to promote Samsung's Exynos 8895 silicon, though Twitter users seem more interested in figuring out what handset is in the picture than discussing Samsung's flagship mobile processor. Do what you want. #Exynos will get things...
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Are you ready for some football? Amazon sure is—the online retailer has inked a one-year agreement with the National Football League (NFL) to stream 10 Thursday night games to its Prime subscribers. It is paying $50 million for the privilege, which is 500 percent more than the NFL's prior agreement with Twitter over streaming rights, and for the same number of games.Twitter got off to a fast start last year when nearly a quarter of a million viewers tuned into its first streamed NFL game featuring the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills. Sure, that was a drop in the bucket compared to the 15.4 million that watched the same game through CBS, but for a first shot on social media, the number of viewers...
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Twitter is making it a little more difficult to be an anonymous troll. The social media giant is getting rid of its default “egg” profile picture. This default has come to be associated on Twitter with harassment and abuse. According to a Twitter representative, “We’ve noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to harass others – often they don’t take the time to personalize their accounts. This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior, which isn’t fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven’t yet personalized their profile photo.”The “egg” picture was originally intended as a reference to Twitter users “hatching” their...
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Twitter has been on a mission over the last few months to curb cyber-bullying. Twitter users before were largely responsible for reporting accounts that they felt violated Twitter’s guidelines, but the social media giant is now taking on some of the responsibility for policing potentially abusive accounts. Twitter is intent upon identifying bad behavior, regardless of whether or not it has been reported. The social networking services plans to limit the functionality of accounts who violate its terms of service. If the account continues to be “abusive”, Twitter “will consider taking further action”. Many users have already experienced the punishment for their bad behavior. This past month, Twitter...
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Do you kiss your mama with that mouth? Twitter has implemented a new policy where it is temporarily limiting the reach of those who violate its abusive behavior policies. The new protocol comes at a time when Twitter is revising its abusive content policies. Affected users have been receiving emails stating, “We’ve detected some potentially abusive behavior from your account, so only your followers can see your activity on Twitter for the amount of time shown below”. The typical time limitation appears to be for about twelve hours. If a person tags someone in a tweet who does not follow them, the tagged person will not see the message. Users are not only being banned for using specific naughty...
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There are certain uncomfortable moments that trigger an awkward feeling in your belly. One of them is walking in on your parents when they're doing the horizontal mambo. While perhaps not quite on that level, it feels a little weird watching two wireless carriers go back and forth on Twitter in a feud over the erotic foreplay known as BDSM. At this point, we wish T-Mobile and Verizon would get a room already. It all started with a T-Mobile ad during the Super Bowl. The commercial is a spoof of 50 Shades of Grey featuring actress and comedian Kristen Schaal (from The Last Man On Earth and Bob's Burgers). She gets aroused while standing in front of several Verizon phones in chains while a man in...
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The FBI may have overstepped its bounds (again) and acted outside what was made legally permissible by a 2008 Justice Department memo when it asked Twitter to provide information about certain account holders. Twitter received the data requests by way of two national security letters (NSLs) that were served, one in 2015 and the other in 2016, which at the time were protected by gag orders preventing Twitter from notifying the affected account holders or publicly disclosing their existence. Those gag orders have been lifted and just as other tech companies have done in recent months—most notably Google and Yahoo—Twitter is making public the data requests in an effort to remain transparent. While...
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